A Breath of Fresh Air
by Ineffabilitea
Summary: Arthur Weasley's first day at the Ministry.


_Author's Note: Written for a t rain in the hp holidaygen exchange on LiveJournal. Many thanks to msmoocow and magnetic pole for betaing, and to gracierose99 for the brainstorming help!_

"Level Four, Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, incorporating Beast, Being and Spirit Divisions, Goblin Liaison Office and Pest Advisory Bureau," Graham Perkins mouthed along with the pleasantly bland witch's voice as the lift ascended. That was the worst part of this job, he decided: the monotony. Every ruddy day was the same.

Same lift, same embarrassing walk past the Auror Headquarters to his tiny office, same owl droppings all over the same interoffice memos detailing the same tired pranks by the same obnoxious prats. Same Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office, in other words.

Oh, who was he kidding? The worst part of his job wasn't the monotony. It was that the job itself was a bloody joke.

The lift doors opened again, this time on the second level, and Graham got out, idly wondering what it would be today. More exploding toilets? That was a perennial favorite. Perhaps some shrinking keys, or even shrinking spectacles, for a change? The usual suspects weren't very creative in their methods of Muggle harassment, frankly.

As he made his way down the corridor, he was so intent on avoiding the scornful looks he was sure were emanating from the Aurors' offices that he needed a moment to notice that his own cramped office had been rendered even more so by the addition of a second desk, and that there were (somehow, Merlin only knew how they'd squeezed in there) two people waiting for him. One he recognized: Amelia Bones. The other looked shockingly young – had he ever been that young? – and had a mop of bright red hair.

"Morning, Graham," Amelia said, as kindly as she ever sounded. "I've brought you a trainee. Graham Perkins, Arthur Weasley."

When this Weasley boy gamely stuck out his hand to shake, Graham directed his attention to Amelia. "I don't need a trainee," he stated flatly.

Amelia sighed. "Graham, we've been through this. Anti-Muggle violence is on the rise-"

"Violence? Ha! So now charmed pocket watches are violent, are they?"

"-Anti-Muggle violence is on the rise, as is Muggle harassment generally, and your office is in a position to track those trends for us. With that in mind, I hope you'll welcome Arthur's able assistance," she concluded pointedly.

Well, there was nothing for it. Graham turned to face his new co-worker. "Welcome to the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office," he grunted, barely suppressing the eye-rolling which generally accompanied that name.

"I'm very excited to be here, sir," Weasley said with sickeningly genuine enthusiasm. Where had they found this one? Nobody could be looking forward to a job in this backwater department.

"I'll leave you two to it," Amelia said, making as graceful an exit as she could, considering it involved climbing over an owl-dropping covered desk.

"Call me Perkins," Graham said gruffly once she had left. "Everyone does. Is it Arthur, or Weasley?"

"Arthur. There are too many Weasleys around for the other, I'm afraid," the young man joked, sounding slightly embarrassed.

Oh. That was why the name sounded vaguely familiar. "Pureblood, then?"

"Yes. Not that that matters, of course."

"Course not. Half-blood, myself." Now this was unusual. Purebloods never ended up in the "Muggle" departments, not if they could help it. No, that was for half-blooded Hufflepuffs with mediocre N.E.W.T.s. It seemed worryingly likely he was dealing with a genuine Muggle enthusiast, here; probably an idealistic Gryffindor as well.

"Oh, then some of your family are Muggles?" Arthur cheerfully asked, confirming that suspicion. "I've always wanted to meet one," he added almost wistfully.

"Well, my mum's been dead these ten years, so I'm afraid you can't," Graham bluntly answered, feeling wrong-footed at the lad's enthusiasm. Oh well. It was a bit rude, he supposed, but Arthur would see how things were soon enough.

"Oh," he replied, looking contrite. "I'm sorry, I – I didn't know."

Graham softened a little. "How could you? Muggles just don't live as long as we wizarding folk do, though. It was her time."

"I suppose," Arthur replied, looking dubious as only someone likely to live to 150 could.

"Well, I'd give you a tour of the office," Graham said, changing the subject, "but there's not much to see."

"I can see that," the younger man replied, looking about. "We don't have a window?"

Graham snorted. "I've been trying to get them to charm a window in here since I started. It'll never happen. Not enough clout."

"I thought Madam Bones was saying we were integral in combating anti-Muggle violence?"

He had to roll his eyes at that. "Amelia means well, and she might even believe that," he said. "But the office tells the real story of where we fit into this place. First thing to keep in mind about the Ministry: it doesn't matter what they say, it matters what they do."

"Well, my parents have never spoken particularly well of Robards," Arthur offered tentatively.

"There you go. Sensible people. He's a terrible Minister. Well, I'm going for a cuppa. Why don't you settle in at your desk, and when I get back we can sort through these memos and find a suitable training mission for you."

Arthur broke out in a slightly silly grin. "A mission? I can hardly wait!"

Graham didn't trust himself to reply to that. Even tea wasn't going to help him face this one calmly, he suspected.

When he returned to the office, Arthur was arranging a few quills and one or two pictures of a friendly-looking, slightly chubby witch on his desk.

"Girlfriend?" Graham asked.

"My wife, Molly," Arthur answered proudly. "She's expecting." He beamed as though he couldn't be happier two months out of Hogwarts than to have a pregnant wife and a dead-end Ministry job.

"That's nice," Graham replied noncommittally. "Are you hoping for a boy or a girl?"

"Molly wants a girl, but it'll be a boy. Weasleys are always boys, you know. Hasn't been a girl in the family since my great-aunt Cecilia."

"Oh. Well, maybe your Molly will be lucky and you'll end the streak."

"Maybe." Arthur didn't seem convinced.

"Well, if you're ready, let's see what we've got to deal with today, eh?" Graham reached for the pile of memos that had accumulated on his desk. Exploding toilets, sure enough, but he wasn't going to start Arthur with that. Shrinking keys, again, but even a Hogwarts' fourth year wouldn't need training to deal with _that_.

Hm. Here was one that might work. Sounded like some sort of children's toy that had been charmed, so it was likely relatively harmless, and so far they'd only sent an Obliviator down to the scene, so his overenthusiastic new colleague couldn't get in anyone's way.

"Got your wand?" He looked like the type who might forget it in his other set of robes.

"Of course!" Arthur responded indignantly, hand going automatically to the wand pocket of his robes.

"Well then, let's head down to the Apparition points in the lobby."

"Where are we going?"

"St. James' Park. Some sort of toy ducks are loose in the pond."

It was an extremely grumpy Graham Perkins who stomped back into the office, Arthur trailing somewhere behind him, just before lunchtime. That hadn't gone as he'd expected at all.

He'd expected the young man to blunder about overeagerly, needlessly complicating the task with his enthusiasm. But instead, Arthur had turned out to need no prompting at all to begin competently rounding up the little rubber ducks from the pond with a series of brisk _Accio_s. And when the little buggers had turned out to have unexpectedly sharp teeth, he hadn't even panicked, but had quickly and calmly sealed their bills shut with a well-placed _Claustroris_. And he'd been a big help in tracing the culprit, though he'd had to be reminded several times that he couldn't interview the Muggle bystanders because they'd been Obliviated.

But that was hardly the worst of it. Just because Graham hadn't wanted a trainee at all didn't mean he'd wanted a completely incompetent one. Arthur actually turning out to be good at the job, he could handle.

No, it was more the way Arthur had effortlessly befriended the Obliviator, Peasegood, who'd never spared Graham so much as a second glance. The way he'd somehow impressed the official Magical Law Enforcement finally sent down to deal with the young wizard, Ernie Prang, who'd set the whole thing up as a joke (he claimed), by asking to keep one of the ducks for "study." Graham snorted. Who needed to study a rubber ducky? But that fool Gumboil had been struck by Arthur's diligence, he could tell.

So on the lift back up to the office, as Arthur nattered on excitedly about how ingenious Muggles were to have created such an item without magic and pondered what uses the ducky might have and occasionally poked at the thing cautiously with his wand, Graham was thinking. He was thinking about the Ministry, and about interdepartmental politics, and how the only thing worse than having a dead-end job in a laughingstock of a department would be to be pensioned off early from that same dead-end job because your new assistant had turned out to be earnest and personable and also better at the job than you.

And thus he slumped down behind his desk in a bit of a huff, pulling out his lunch and gesturing at Arthur to feel free to do the same, not trusting himself to speak civilly just yet.

Arthur produced a charmed picnic basket from his desk, from which he extracted a steaming bowl of soup, bread and butter, a chicken potpie, two homemade biscuits and a cold glass of milk. He looked rather guiltily over at Graham's dry roast beef sandwich.

"I think maybe Molly's trying to fatten me up," he joked. "She's a wonderful cook, but sometimes she doesn't know when to stop. If you'd, um, like to split some of this-"

"I'm fine," Graham answered abruptly.

"All right," Arthur said. They lapsed into awkward silence.

And so it was sitting in silence that Moody found them a few minutes later. "There you two are," he growled, "I've been looking all over the Ministry for you. There's a raid on, Perkins. Coming?"

Graham looked over at Arthur, who was trying vainly not to look too excited about the prospect of tagging along on a raid, and had a sudden brainstorm. If there was anyone in the Ministry less likely to take to Arthur's over-eagerness than Graham himself, it was Alastor Moody. The no-nonsense Auror would be driven up the wall by the young man's incessant curiosity in no time.

"Actually, Alastor, Arthur here has already shown himself to be quite useful in the field, and my lumbago is acting up again. If you wouldn't mind taking just him…?"

"Fine," Moody replied gruffly. "Get your wand, boy, and meet us in the lobby in ten minutes."

As soon as Moody was out the door, Arthur was out of his seat and a-twitter. "My first raid! With the Aurors! How exciting! Do you think we'll have to duel anyone?"

"Let's hope not," Graham answered. "Listen, just keep out of the Aurors' way until they tell you you're wanted, okay? They don't like it when we get underfoot."

"Of course, of course. They'll hardly know I'm there." Arthur grabbed his robes and headed for the door. "I should head down to the lobby. I'd hate to be late and make a bad first impression!"

Once the young man was gone, Graham let out a sigh and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. Being around someone so energetic was draining, even when your job wasn't at stake. Maybe he could sneak out for a bit and grab a pint at The Leaky Cauldron.

"You were a big help, Weasley." The sound of Moody's gruff voice jolted Graham out of the daze he had fallen into while filing paperwork. The content of his words took another moment to register. 'Big help'? Arthur had managed to impress _Moody_, the Auror who trusted no one?

"Thank you, sir," was Arthur's reply. "I hope you find something to help you with those arsons." Arthur himself entered the office a moment later, beaming ear-to-ear and toting some sort of Muggle … something. Graham had never seen anything quite like it. It had an odd shape, like some sort of upside-down cone on a pedestal, and translucent bits as well as opaque ones.

Arthur noticed the direction of his gaze. "It's fascinating, isn't it?"

"What _is_ it?"

Arthur's face fell a little. "Oh. I was hoping you'd have some idea."

"Never seen one before. What's wrong with it?"

"I couldn't tell. Neither could any of the Aurors. Moody said he was impressed I even spotted it was hexed." Arthur smiled proudly. "So I brought it back so we could investigate." He set the thing carefully on his desk; it seemed to be quite heavy.

Graham eyed it dubiously. "It's a hex, then? Any ideas where to start?"

"Well," Arthur began hesitantly, "I was thinking – usually the hex has something to do with the object's _function_, right? Like, keys are small and easy for Muggles to lose, so wizards charm them to shrink."

"So what does this do?"

"I, um, don't know. But it has one of those thingamajiggies-" He held up a cord.

"A plug," Graham supplied.

"-yes, a plug. So that means it runs on eckeltricity, so I figure if we just, well, _plug_ it in, maybe it'll do whatever it is it's supposed to."

Graham nodded. "That's a sound idea," he agreed, "but where exactly were you thinking of plugging it in?"

Arthur looked perplexed. "We don't- I mean, we're the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office, surely we have some way-"

"Arthur, may I remind you that we don't even have a window? Besides, even if the Ministry wanted to give us electricity-" he pronounced the word carefully – "it wouldn't work down here anyway. It's like Hogwarts: too much magic."

"Oh. Well, couldn't you set up a suitable substitute using a few _Volta_ charms and a reservoir of magical energy?"

Now it was Graham's turn to look stunned. The man must be daft. Did he think anyone capable of that level of experimental Charms work would be stuck in this job? Graham had barely scraped a N.E.W.T. in Charms as it was.

"I've had some luck with a simple set-up using Floo Powder at home," Arthur continued. "Maybe I can bring it in tomorrow and modify it. It'd need to be stronger, of course, and there's the problem with the faulty connection to work out," he muttered, apparently lost in thought.

Graham didn't know quite what to say to that. "Sounds good."

Arthur smiled. "Excellent. I'll come in early tomorrow to start the set-up. Now, the Aurors were telling me there's been a rash of arsons lately?"

"That's true," Graham affirmed gruffly. "You can read about it in the Prophet. Houses of Muggles, Muggle-borns, even some half-bloods, burnt to the ground, and no sign of the cause."

"Moody thinks it's that new dark wizard everyone's whispering about behind it."

"Moody thinks dark wizards are behind everything. It's his job."

"Oh." Arthur looked disappointed. "He seemed very certain. Said we were raiding the home of one of his suspected followers and everything, looking for clues."

"Well, maybe this thing you found will turn out to be one, then. Now goodness, is it six already?" Graham remarked, by way of changing the subject. "Time to be heading home, Arthur."

"Is it really? Merlin, my first day has really just flown by. I'll see you tomorrow, Perkins. Pleasure to be working with you."

"See you tomorrow, Arthur."

The next day, Graham entered the office with a vague feeling of dread, to find Arthur, just as he'd feared, on the floor tinkering with a device that looked even odder than the Muggle thingy he'd brought back yesterday.

Arthur looked up from his work at his approach. "Ah, Perkins, there you are. Good morning! Could you hand me the scootdiver, please?"

Graham obediently handed the screwdriver to him. "So, this is your magical electricity substitute, then?" he asked cautiously.

"Yes, yes. Isn't she a beauty?" The young man grinned and ran his hands through his shock of red hair. "Tell you the truth, I'm glad of the excuse to bring her in and show her off. Molly thinks I'm a bit daft for all this Muggle rubbish, I'm afraid."

"I can imagine," Graham replied dryly.

"Your wife the same, then?"

"Haven't got one."

"Oh. Well, you know, if you ever get a hankering for home-cooking, I'm sure Molly'd be happy to have you over; I'd just need to owl-"

"That's very generous of you," Graham cut him off. "I'll keep it in mind. So, are you ready to test the … thing yet?"

"Oh no. It'll be another hour or so before we're ready to go – needs a lot of fine-tuning, I'm afraid."

"Ah. Well, in the meantime, maybe I'll just take a sketch of this thing down to Muggle Liaison and see if they have any idea what it is." The reception witch in the Muggle Liaison Office was really quite stunning, and flirting with her was a pleasant way to kill time. And who knew? Maybe someone down there really would know what in Merlin's name this was.

"That's a good idea. Should've thought of that myself," Arthur answered.

"Oh, you're busy enough as it is, I'd say. I don't mind a bit. Be right back," Graham said from the doorway.

The receptionist had been even friendlier than usual, and flashing his rough sketch of the odd conical object Arthur had found around the Muggle Liaison Office had even managed to provide an answer to its identity, so the Graham Perkins who returned to the office forty-five minutes later had a spring in his step and was almost tempted to whistle.

Arthur looked similarly pleased with himself. "Oh good, you're back. It's working. I was just waiting for you so I could test it." And before Graham could draw breath and urge caution, he'd bent down and plugged his discovery in.

Nothing happened.

"Oh bother, there's some sort of switch," Arthur muttered, "here we are, now."

And then something happened. Several somethings at once, in fact. There was a flash, a loud bang, an explosion of what looked like liquid fire, a yelp, a cry of '_Congelato_!' and then blessed silence.

"What the hell was that?" Arthur cried, batting at his still-smoldering robe.

"That's what I'd like to know," said Moody from the doorway, a small crowd of Aurors peering over his shoulder.

"The Muggles call it a lava lamp," Graham explained, "but I don't think they intended it quite so literally. Apparently they're a new craze of some sort."

"Could it be?" Arthur muttered. "A _Nomen Omen_ hex? No wonder it was hard to identify."

"What was that, Weasley?" Moody asked.

"I think we've found the cause of those mysterious fires, sir," Arthur stated. "You see, this, uh, lava lamp – you'll remember I suspected it of being hexed, but none of us could identify the hex used."

"And you think it was a _Nomen Omen_? Oh, very subtle, that, giving the object the true nature embodied in its name. Just the sort of thing we suspect this new dark wizard is capable of. Good job catching that, Weasley, though I suppose," he said, glancing at the smoking mess that was all that remained of the lamp, "we won't be able to confirm your hypothesis until we find another hexed, er, lava lamp."

Arthur blushed at the praise. "Thank you, but I couldn't have figured it out with Perkins' help, sir. He's the one who found out the name."

Now Graham blushed. "It was nothing, really."

"Excellent work, the both of you, but Weasley?"

"Yes?"

"Next time you decide to mix experimental Charms and hexed artifacts, maybe you should set up a few containment spells first."

"Point taken, sir."

Once all the gawking Aurors had filed by and congratulated them on their success in cracking the arson case, Arthur and Graham were left alone, staring at the melted goo that had been the lava lamp.

"I'm really sorry about the mess, Perkins. I should've been more careful."

"Never mind. Between the scorch mark that's sure to leave and the owl droppings, let's just say the office has … character."

"I should say 'thank you,' too, for saving my life with that Freezing charm."

"Oh, any wizard would've done the same. After all, why waste a perfectly good co-worker?" Graham joked. "Seriously, Arthur. I could never have figured this one out on my own. It's a pleasure working with you," he said, and meant it.

Arthur surveyed the carnage once more. "It really is a shame," he said. "I was hoping to keep it once we'd figured it out. As a sort of souvenir."

Graham smiled. "Well," he said, "the plug's only a little bit singed. You could keep that."

Arthur perked up. "You're right. I suppose I could."


End file.
